Bash a Pensioner

Well here we go again . The lovely Mr Osbourne is going to announce his latest austerity measure and with no prizes one of the measures is bash the Pensioner. Yes you have guessed right it us again :Very sad:I know that we in Bulgaria will or should get the winter fuel allowance but how on earth can he have any heart to stop any money going to Pensioners. OK so some have more money than others but don't people understand that to get a reasonable pension you have to pay into a pot, and suffer hardship in doing so. You only get out what you put in, plus you still have to pay income tax on a pension if you are over the tax threshold .

We have paid into these pension schemes in order to have a comfortable life in our dotage. But it would seem that we are paying tax to benefit the sick, lame &lazy brigade :shocked1:We put in the pot but we are not allowed to get owt out of the pot. Why did we move abroad? Basically to enjoy the last days on this planet. But we also moved to get away from a very unjust society, a corrupt government. Do these politicians forget that we pay their wages, and it is a duty for them to serve us (not). We all paid into the social security for many years and as soon as you move abroad you are not entitled to any benefits e.g. free prescriptions, now there's a term free. It aint free we paid for it. A question then what has happened to the money we paid in (and are still paying)?

Your views please

_________________Cast off all care, inhale fresh air.

GinaASenior user

Posts : 176Join date : 2009-11-15

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 9:00 am

Here's a bunch of Tory millionaire spivs demonising a bunch of elderly British pensioners who paid into the system all their lives for what they would spend on a meal out. I want to see the retired generation Really start to use their vote

bigsavakSuper user

Posts : 756Join date : 2009-09-16

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 9:16 am

Just keep the bloody thing Mr Osborne, my wife and I will muddle along without it. You give the money to the more deserving, bankers in bail outs. overseas aid, bailing out Euro Zone countries, endless public enquiries, life long scroungers who have never paid a penny in tax or NI. Just for the record where we live in Bg it gets very cold here and much colder than the UK we don't all live on the Costa's and we moved to Bg not because we are rich but because we couldn't afford to live in retirement in the UK on the pathetic pension you pay. However when you and your kind get us out of the EU we shall be back demanding a house, council tax benefit, minimum income guarantee and anything else we can get our grubby little hands on.

chrissybgSuper user

Posts : 394Join date : 2013-02-02

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 12:07 pm

Bravo hear hear we agree with all your comments. We have paid in a lot during our lives We live on our money as we are not entitled to pension just yet because the PMs decided to put the retirement age up and what we have banked we are paying tax on yet again.We are dicusted with the way English govenment has short changed every one. We are the generation that worked and worked very hard indeed and paid in Now all they want to do is take away from us all even more.These next generations are being kept by the majority of the rest of the world now and they are getting all the hand outs from the day they leave school with no intention most of them to work.Take a look at the buses all driven by foreign people, thank goodness they do or their wouldn't be any transport in London for a start It appears to be the same in every profession too.

Well here we go again . The lovely Mr Osbourne is going to announce his latest austerity measure and with no prizes one of the measures is bash the Pensioner. Yes you have guessed right it us again :Very sad:I know that we in Bulgaria will or should get the winter fuel allowance but how on earth can he have any heart to stop any money going to Pensioners. OK so some have more money than others but don't people understand that to get a reasonable pension you have to pay into a pot, and suffer hardship in doing so. You only get out what you put in, plus you still have to pay income tax on a pension if you are over the tax threshold .

We have paid into these pension schemes in order to have a comfortable life in our dotage. But it would seem that we are paying tax to benefit the sick, lame &lazy brigade :shocked1:We put in the pot but we are not allowed to get owt out of the pot. Why did we move abroad? Basically to enjoy the last days on this planet. But we also moved to get away from a very unjust society, a corrupt government. Do these politicians forget that we pay their wages, and it is a duty for them to serve us (not). We all paid into the social security for many years and as soon as you move abroad you are not entitled to any benefits e.g. free prescriptions, now there's a term free. It aint free we paid for it. A question then what has happened to the money we paid in (and are still paying)?

Your views please

So true Tony - most of us started work at 15 years of age and I did a six year apprenticeship and finished before I was 21, most youngsters now haven't even decided what profession to take up at that age. We basically paid 50 years worth of pension into the pot and what does our government past and present pay us? They pay us the fourth lowest pension pro rata in Europe and expect us to subsidise the rest of the benefits system. We are also accused of being the baby boomers and that has been the cause of the problem, but they have all had 60 odd years to prepare for us retiring and their researchers and experts would have advised them of retired people living longer, so were is the problem? In my opinion the problem is the incompetent politicians that have run the country for the last goodness knows how years and we have to tolerate them while they enjoy their gold plated pensions we provide for them.

CarmenSuper user

Posts : 714Join date : 2010-03-19

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 4:19 pm

If I am to be treated differently to other Brits because I don,t reside in the UK, then why is it justifiable that the British government can and does keep taking my taxes? So people from other countries can get benefits almost instantly in britain .but we wont pay money to people who have paid into the system for years .good house keeping I think not . How dare a man who votes for his own (large) pay rises and pension pots dictate to anybody!!!! Most warm countries that OAP's retire to have some degree of cold during the winter when the central heating is used. In the summer what is left of the £200 (if any) is probably used on air conditioning which I am sure is the first thing that holiday makers switch on when they arrive.

cowshed-sarahSuper user

Posts : 316Join date : 2010-03-24Age : 70

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 4:31 pm

So pensions are now being classed as a "Benefit".As far as I can remember I started work at 15 and have payed in for over 50years or did I just dream that The entitlement should remain based on contributions made not on where one lives.

BGTRAVELLERSuper user

Posts : 1074Join date : 2009-09-07

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 4:36 pm

That's alright for Osborne and others in government who agree with him,but I bet THEY are never cold in the winter months.I have worked since leaving school at 14,have paid into the 'system' and am now retired and living in here in Bulgaria where I can tell you the winter months ARE cold.If I was still in England where the cost of everything is rising and the British citizen is a 'second class' person I would probably be unable to survive due to the incompetence of the government in running the country. Enough said!!!!

So pensions are now being classed as a "Benefit".As far as I can remember I started work at 15 and have payed in for over 50years or did I just dream that The entitlement should remain based on contributions made not on where one lives.

Too true Sarah it is not a benefit it's your own money being paid back. Now my Father nor my eldest brother an Uncle or 2 never made retirement age, so what happened to the money they paid in? Plus the many others that sadly did not manage to get to the club house. I know the money goes in 'Benefits' for the Sick, Lame &Lazy lot.

_________________Cast off all care, inhale fresh air.

Edna BiraSenior user

Posts : 170Join date : 2013-01-23

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 7:41 pm

Surely everyone knows that what you pay in goes to pay those that receive it at that time, it doesn't go into a Pot or a fund for later use (as in a Personal Pension) its spent as you contribute, that's why the "baby boomers"have become a problem financially for the country, ie more collecting than paying in, simple maths! When the social system was born the average life expectancy was around 48-55, so a retiring age of 65 was easily manageable (fiscally) (and only the bear minimum to "survive"was paid), now folks are living 25-30 longer on average, this wasn't factored in by successive governments (more like heads buried in sand) and now the "pension timebomb"is ready to explode, quite simply the country cannot afford its social obligations, not only pensions, but everything. the current obligations UK PLC has is around 5 trillion £s and rising. I aplogise if i sound like your headmaster!

Surely everyone knows that what you pay in goes to pay those that receive it at that time, it doesn't go into a Pot or a fund for later use (as in a Personal Pension) its spent as you contribute, that's why the "baby boomers"have become a problem financially for the country, ie more collecting than paying in, simple maths! When the social system was born the average life expectancy was around 48-55, so a retiring age of 65 was easily manageable (fiscally) (and only the bear minimum to "survive"was paid), now folks are living 25-30 longer on average, this wasn't factored in by successive governments (more like heads buried in sand) and now the "pension timebomb"is ready to explode, quite simply the country cannot afford its social obligations, not only pensions, but everything. the current obligations UK PLC has is around 5 trillion £s and rising. I aplogise if i sound like your headmaster!

Your statement is quite sound, but you have neglected to say that there has also been a massive introduction of immigrants into the UK who after a reduced period are receiving Benefits and/ or getting pensions, even at a reduced rate. To counter the suggestion that the baby boomers are causing the problems, then there must have been an excess in the governments coffers when we were in work, so what happened to that money.

I am not being argumentative on this but the sums never seem to add up.

_________________Cast off all care, inhale fresh air.

hosemanSenior user

Posts : 119Join date : 2012-03-10

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 8:09 pm

While I sympathise with many of the previous posts, can I add to Edna Bira's post about the common misconception that your old age state pension is something to do with a "pot"that your lifetime contributions have been put into: they have been used to pay pensions and other benefits to those who were entitled to them at that time. This is completely different from the private / stakeholder pension which many of us have been contributing to, where the contributions do indeed fund a "pot"which you get when you are eligible or when you decide to take it (minus the ongoing management charges of course!).This to my mind is a greater swindle than the state pension, as it has been portrayed by the establishment as a viable, tax-efficient alternative to other forms of saving for retirement.What it actually is, is a gravy train for the insurance companies who operate the schemes: their shareholders, their directors, their legal advisors, their auditors, and their other hangers-on.The state pension is extremely generous compared to the amount that the average retirement saver would have to accumulate to get the same kind of payout. The same can be said for those who get earnings-related pensions. These are so generous that private sector employers have been injuring themselves in the rush for the exit door, steering their hapless employees towards the same meagre returns as their ever more penurious private pension neighbours.A pension system which is run for the benefit of its contributors? Get a grip on reality: they are the LAST people to benefit, whether we are talking state or private pensions. It's been a con for years, and will continue to be so while the gap between the numbers in the working population and the retiring / retired population increases. The young generation can look forward to working until they are in their 70s. If they can find work.At least we got out before that.

Brian1Senior user

Posts : 215Join date : 2010-08-13

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 10:08 pm

So the very wealthiest pensioners, those who can afford to own a house in the UK as their main residence and another one in a warmer country where they spend their winters, will be unaffected by this temperature test then? Typical Tory policy. As long as all pensioners in the UK continue to receive the WFA as a universal benefit, paid regardless of financial need, how easy/difficult it is to heat their home, whether they spend the allowance on what it is intended for or not, then those living within the EU should continue to receive it also. The "temperature test"will be arbitrary, take no account of the real situation (the temperatures , relate only to a few hours a day between noon and 4pm, and once the sun goes down the temperature drops like a stone, leaving houses extremely cold during the nights and early mornings)

BlinkSuper user

Posts : 909Join date : 2010-02-11

Subject: Re: Bash a Pensioner Wed Jun 26, 2013 10:23 pm

What our contempt-powered fraud of an innumerate chancellor brayed out today had very little to do with economics and everything to do with politics. It was a colossally vindictive, ideologically-motivated, economically-bankrupt attack on the state and the poor.

It was an exercise in calculated narrative from a man who can't add up. And it was necessitated solely by the abject failure of his last lot of "policies"to achieve a single one of the targets he previously set himself - because those policies are by definition as flawed as the man himself so obviously is. The highest number he can count to is also the same as the number of ideas he has: precisely one, which is more of the same, as if you could cure a condition by giving someone more of the thing that made them ill.

And somehow, despite his kind of people getting even richer during our poverty, we're still expected to continue to pay the price for this mistake of a man. The myth of austerity is that it's a necessity, when in reality it's a choice - the wrong choice - championed by an idiot who is destroying lives to try and win votes. The only reason it's not described as a mugging is that usually mugging's are performed by people without money at the expense of those who have it;yet this expensively-suited, privately educated bundle of guff is casually condemning families to food banks so he can pretend that's the same as taking a tough choice.

Enough of you George, or Gideon, or Jeffrey or whatever you're called. Enough, before there's nothing left to cut, or sell off, or destroy.